Summer Day Birthday

Such a sick cover.

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:09:22 +1030

Such a sick cover.

Got to love the man.

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:08:44 +1030

Got to love the man.

Bring it out already man.

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 04:50:31 +1030

Bring it out already man.

Paid Dues I’ll see you there.

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 04:50:11 +1030

Paid Dues I’ll see you there.

Welcome to Joel’s 2013 bucket list. 101 things to do before January 1st 2014. Wish me luck...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 06:15:25 +1030

Welcome to Joel’s 2013 bucket list. 101 things to do before January 1st 2014. Wish me luck people. The things I do instead of studying.

1. Go on every ride at Six flags.
2. Do stand-up comedy for at least 3 minutes.
3. Take a picture with every Disney character at Disney World.
4. Go to an NBA game and go for the away team.
5. Break social norms for a day ie cut any lines or sit in lecture f…acing audience.
6. Eat something exotic in every country I visit.
7. Go a day without technology.
8. Get a piercing.
9. Eat a snail in Paris.
10. Lick the Eiffel Tower.
11. Play Empire State of mind whilst standing in front of the Empire State Building.
12. Crip walk in Grand Central Park.
13. Talk to a stranger about life on the Subway.
14. Get in a New York taxi and say follow that car.
15. Go to Times Square and do my own countdown cause I won’t be there for New Years.
16. Travel over the Golden gate bride.
17. Keep saying where’s Jennnayy to Forest Gump impersonator at some San Fran restaurant.
18. Do a knock and run on Lombard street (that famous windy road, I think that’s what it’s called)
19. Scare someone in Alcatraz prison.
20. Roller skate shirtless in Miami.
21. Act out five famous movie scenes in public.
22. Win a ghosting competition with someone (ghosting is walking really closely behind someone without them noticing.)
23. Tell a Croatian I’m Serbian in Croatia.
24. Prank call the same person 10 times in one day.
25. Dedicate a hate song to someone on the radio.
26. Eat a bagel in NYC.
27. See someone famous live.
28. Speak in the accent of the county i visit for at least one day.
29. Find a leprechaun in Ireland.
30. Learn a song on guitar and make a cover video where the person talks at the start for way to long.
31. Shoot a half court bball shot, kick a 50m rugby penalty, score a goal from a corner and hit a home run in one day.
32. Make a call in a red English telephone booth.
33. Ask for the time whilst next to Big Ben.
34. Ride a double decker bus like a roller coaster.
35. Find a good busker.
36. Do the supersize challenge for a day.
37. Get top comment on a YouTube video.
38. Do the ‘yes man’ concept for a day.
39. Make 10 strangers laugh with horrible jokes.
40. Do 5 handstand push-ups
41. Don’t shave for a month.
42. Get a girl to put me on her shoulders at a music festival.
43. Teach a dog how to roll over and speak.
44. Watch a drive in movie.
45. Read 15 books in 30 days.
46. Eat pasta, meatballs and pizza in one sitting in Italy.
47. Learn how to draw one thing really well.
48. Argue with a fortune teller.
49. Hi- five one hundred people in a day.
50- Show my parents around college.
51- Catch a random bus and get off after half an hour.
52- Donate blood.
53- Get a tattoo.
54- Dress in thrift shop clothing for a week.
55 - Crash a wedding.
56- Watch all the Rocky films in one sitting.
57- Solve a Rubik’s cube.
58- Watch a live football match in Europe.
59- Go to a crazy festival in Spain and show tourists around as if I’m a local.
60- Stay awake for 48 hours.
61 - See the Monalisa and tell people around the real ones hidden and that’s fake.
62- Steer a Gondola in Venice and sing.
63- Swim in the sea off the Greek Islands.
64- Party in Amsterdam.
65- Recite the end monologue from Gladiator whilst standing in front on the Colosseum.
66- Take photos in a photo booth with a stranger.
67- Get to 6% fat by the end of the year.
68- Go out for a week straight.
69- Write a short story.
70- Be able to speak to someone in another language , basic sentences.
71- Get to know someone from high school I never knew.
72- Run a marathon and act like I won when I finish.
73- Learn 5 cool songs on piano.
74- Pay for a strangers meal.
75- Learn a magic trick.
76- Survive without technology for a day.
77- Get a street sign with my name on it for my room.
78- Win a game of chess in the park.
79- Do the scene on deck from titanic on a boat with a random
80- Spend a day in silence.
81- Learn hello in 50 different languages.
82- Pretend to push someone into the Grand Canyon.
83- Do one of those adult puzzles.
84- Use 50 of the worst pick up lines in one night.
85- Sing ‘wheels on the bus’ on public transport.
86- Call a radio show and act like I just won tickets.
87- Ultimate wingman Joe all around Europe Hamish and Andy style.
88- Eat food off a strangers plate.
89- Do lunges all the way up and down the isle of a plane.
90- Whilst in an elevator, pretend to be on the phone and then start talking about everyone in the elevator.
91- Write something in wet cement.
92- Win a game of scissors, paper rock in every new country I go to (cheat if necessary)
93- Tell someone wearing an I love New York shirt that they don’t.
94- Convince someone in England that the US office is better.
95- Find a four leaf clover in Ireland.
96- Learn to Longboard.
97- Get 10, 000 followers on a blog.
98- Win a bet on a horse.
99- Hug a stranger who has just landed at the airport and tell them I’ve missed them.
100- Walk straight into a packed club.
101- Complete my bucket list with proof.

I saw a guy in a wheelchair today. He had dirty shoes. Trust no one.

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 08:10:29 +1030

I saw a guy in a wheelchair today. He had dirty shoes. Trust no one.

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Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:24:10 +1030

Good Kid, M.A.A.D City: A Short Film by Kendrick Lamar

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:23:43 +1030

Setting: Compton

Characters:

Kendrick Lamar (present Kendrick)
K.Dot (young Kendrick)
Sherane
Kendrick’s Mother
Kendrick’s Father
Dave
Dave’s brother
Keisha’s sister
Demetrius (Sherane’s favourite cousin)
The Two Brothers (Sherane’s younger brothers)
Granny (Sherane’s Granny who she lives with)
Sherane’s Mother (a crack addict)
Uncle Tony (Kendrick’s Uncle who was killed)
Joey (either childhood friend of Kendrick or cousin)
L, Boog, Yaya, Lucky (friends/family members of Kendrick when he was 9)
Unknown Woman (who gets the boys to pray)

The Story:

Sherane aka Master Splinter’s Daughter

The story opens as a flash-forward. K.Dot has known Sherane for a number of months by this point. He met her at a party where they flirted and exchanged numbers. They kept in contact with each other over the summer and got to know each other pretty well, he talks about her family’s history of gang-banging that made him wary but didn’t stop him from hooking up with her.

At the end of this song K.Dot is driving to Sherane’s house in his Mother’s van, he has sex on the brain. But when he turns up Sherane is outside waiting with two dudes in black hoodies (possibly her two younger brothers, or her cousins, one of which could be Demetrius).

Skit #1 - as K.Dot pulls up at Sherane’s house his Mother tries to call him but instead gets his voice-mail. We learn from his Mother that K.Dot said he was borrowing her van for just 15 minutes. She warns him not to mess with “them hoodrats” especially “Sherane”.

****, Don’t Kill My Vibe

The content of this song doesn’t actually follow the Sherane narrative. It is a song told from the perspective of Kendrick Lamar the rapper and how as he gradually gets more recognition as an artist he sees people around him changing, “I can feel the new people around me just want to be famous.” He also talks about trying to maintain his credibility while becoming a more mainstream artist, “I’m trying to keep it alive and not compromise the feeling we love/You trying to keep it deprived and only co-sign what radio does.”

Skit #2 – The narrative begins. K.Dot’s homies pick him up in their white Toyota with a pack of blacks and a beat CD.

Backseat Freestyle

The most self-explantory song on the album. Young K.Dot cruising around town with his homies, getting high and dropping freestyles in the backseat. This is a life is good moment, living free, no troubles. The calm before the storm.

The Art of Peer Pressure

The narrative begins to build. The pressures of hanging with the homies becomes more than simply having a laugh and freestyling. The usually drug free and sober K.Dot is brought in to a world of drinking, smoking, and violence when with “the homies”. Cruising around in a white Toyota, hitting up girls, jumping dudes wearing rival colours, and bragging about what they just did.

The stakes are upped when K.Dot and his homies rob a house that they had been stalking for two months. Cops pursue them but lose them.

Skit #3 - K.Dot is “faded” because he “hit the wrong blunt”, this a true story of young Kendrick hitting a blunt laced with angel dust. The homies talk about dropping K.Dot off back at home, so he can take his Mother’s van and go hit up Sherane – and then they can all meet back up later on the block.

Money Trees

K.Dot recaps the story so far.

He talks about robbing the house, “Home invasion was persuasive/From 9 to 5 I know its vacant.”

He mentions ****ing Sherane and bragging about it to his homies, “I ****ed Sherane then went to tell my bros.”

He references Backseat Freestyle when he talks about rhyming to beats, “Parked the car and then we started rhyming, ya bish/The only thing we had to free our mind.”

And he talks about jumping dudes who looked like they had more money than them, “Then freeze that verse when we see dollar signs/You looking like an easy come up ya bish/A silver spoon I know you come from ya bish.”

The line in the chorus “Everybody gon’ respect the shooter/But the one in front of the gun lives forever.” is deeply important, not just as a life motto, but in regards to the events that later take place in this story regarding Dave and his brother. It’s also a reference to Kendrick’s Uncle Tony, who was shot and killed at Louie’s Burgers; this event is a snap back to reality from the “dreams of living life like rappers do.”

Skit #4– K.Dot’s Mother leaves another voice-mail. She wants her car back.

Poetic Justice

K.Dot has been dropped off back at home by his homies and is about to go see Sherane. He’s probably driving on the way there in his Mother’s van. He talks about her and their relationship so far - it appears they may have had some arguments, he talks about her meeting up with her girlfriends to curse him, and going out partying rather than talking with him.

Skit #5 – this is when we catch up with Sherane aka Master Splinter’s Daughter. It starts whereSherane ended, and you can tell because that haunting female vocal (used in the beat toSherane) comes back in this skit. The two dudes with Sherane approach K.Dot and ask him where he and his family are from (trying to work out what gang he is affiliated with). They force K.Dot out of the van and jump him.

Good Kid

This really sets off the theme of the second half of the album and it is all to do with - realisation.

K.Dot talks about getting jumped, “For the record I recognize that I’m easy prey/I got ate alive yesterday.”

He discusses the negative effects of gang-culture, and being unable to escape the pressure of people wanting to know what gang he represents, “But what am I supposed to do/When the topic is red or blue/And you understand that I ain’t/But know I’m accustomed to.” Red or Blue obviously refers to the LA gangs of Bloods and Crips.

The red and the blue in the second verse become police sirens. K.Dot talks about getting no sympathy from the cops because they stereotype him as a gang-banger, making him lift up his shirt in order to look for a gang affiliated tattoo, “I heard them chatter: “He’s probably young but I know that he’s down”/Step on his neck as hard as your bullet proof vest.”

K.Dot is trapped in a violent culture and can’t get a reprieve from the gangs or the police.

M.A.A.D City

More self-awareness and realisation of the corrupt city that K.Dot lives in.

K.Dot’s recent beat-down brings back early memories of similar situations, witnessing someone with their brains blown out at a burger stand back when he was 9 (I’m not sure if he is talking about his Uncle Tony again, or someone else), he thinks he knows the person who did it but he censors his name. He also talks about how his cousin was killed back in 94.

He talks about his Father telling him to get a job but he got fired after his friends pressured him in to staging a robbery.

In the final verse he tries to let the good shine through and offer respite for the youth and how they don’t have to succumb to the temptations and pressures of the street. He hopes that his experience and intelligence can do good for the youth living in similar situations. “Compton, USA Made me an Angel on Angel Dust.”

Skit #6 – K.Dot’s homies meet back up with him later as planned. They try to boost him back up after his beat-down, and they offer him alcohol to take his mind off it.

Swimming Pools

An anti-alcohol song, that again plays in to the second half of the album’s realisation about the vices previously holding Kendrick back. Kedrick talks about growing up around alcohol both within his family and group of friends.

Skit #7 – this is the big impact moment of the narrative. The plan is to take revenge on the dudes that jumped K.Dot. One of K.Dot’s homies (possibly Dave) talks about maybe dropping K.Dot back off at home, but this idea is turned down, and K.Dot stays. The homies see the dudes that jumped K.Dot and a shoot-out begins. During the battle K.Dot’s friend Dave gets shot. The dudes that shot Dave drive off and K.Dot is left holding Dave as he dies in his arms.

Sing About Me

Verse 1 – from the perspective of Dave’s brother. He says the blood is on Kendrick’s hands because the whole situation happened out of revenge for something that happened to Kendrick. But he says he appreciates that Kendrick was there for his brother and held him while he was dying. Dave’s brother wonders if he will ever discover a passion like Kendrick to get him out of the hood – he says he hopes Kendrick will remember him and sing about him when he makes it big, and if he dies before the album drops…pop, pop, pop – he gets killed.

Verse 2 – from the perspective of Keisha’s sister. She is mad at Kendrick for putting her sister on blast (on Section 80) without even knowing her properly. She talks about how she is living the same life as her sister, as a prostitute, and is proud of her living and what she does. She claims not to be just another woman lost in the system. She says her sister died in vein. Unlike Dave’s brother she doesn’t want to be sang about on the album. She feels great and says she’ll never fade away….but then she does, her vocals slowly fade out in to obscurity…perhaps she died or just became another nameless “hoodrat”.

Verse 3 – from Kendrick’s perspective. Looking in the mirror. His fear of death. He speaks to Dave’s brother, agreeing that Dave was like a brother to him. He speaks to Keisha’s sister saying that Keisha’s story was the one that drove him to write something that powerful and real – he didn’t mean to offend. He talks of how music saved him and pulled him away from the drugs, money and guns.

Skit #8 – K.Dot’s homies talking after Dave has been killed. Some of them want to go back and get revenge. K.Dot finally snaps and says he is tired of this ****.

I’m Dying of Thirst

Kendrick talks about been tired of running and gunning people down. It’s just a circle of death. The perpetual struggle.

Skit #9 –(EDITED) K.Dot is still angry and upset over Dave’s death. An unknown woman (perhaps a passer-by/shop-keeper) approaches the boys, she sees that one of them has a gun “That better not be what I think it is.” She tells them that they are dying of thirst and that they need to take a new path and let Jesus in to their lives. She makes them prayer. From here on K.Dot begins to live a new life as Kendrick Lamar.

Real

This is Kendrick disregarding the street life and turning his back on gang-banging, drugs, alcohol, violence etc. The different meanings of being “real”. Are you real because you represent your hood and shoot people? Are you real because you try to escape that life and make something of yourself?

Verse 1 – about certain girls (but could be Sherane). She loves handbags, French Tip, bank slips. But what love got to do with it when you don’t love yourself?

Verse 2 – about certain homies (but could be Dave’s brother). He loves fast cars, fast women, beef, streets, ducking police, hood-life. But what love got to do with it when you don’t love yourself?

Verse 3 – about Kendrick. He explains the previous two verses - “I love first verse cos your the girl I attract.” and “I love second verse cos your the homie that packed burner.” “I love what the both of you have to offer.”

He wonders if he should hate her for what happened or should he hate his homies for convincing him to seek revenge. Or should he hate the fact that none of that **** makes him real.

Skit #10 – voice-mail from his Father. He tells Kendrick not to make the same mistakes he did, and that none of this stuff makes him real and that he should get out and make something of himself. His Mother tells him that Top Dawg called and wants him in the studio – she tells him to take his music career seriously – that it is his chance to get out and tell his story to the kids of Compton so that they have hope. This is technically the end of the story in a narrative sense - the tape is ejected and then rewound.

Compton

The narrative is over. This song is after Kendrick has made it and is now giving back just like his Mother told him too. It’s a positive outlook of a city that is often full of darkness and violence.

Skit #11 - the narrative starts over again when K.Dot borrows his Mother’s van.

By www.theshirker.com

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Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:21:26 +1030

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Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:21:09 +1030

I know you love it when this beat is on.

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:17:20 +1030

I know you love it when this beat is on.

The Most Beautiful Flower

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 07:13:38 +1030

The park bench was deserted as I sat down to read
Beneath the long,straggly branches of an old willow tree.
Disillusioned by life with good reason to frown,
For the world was intent on dragging me down.

And if that weren’t enough to ruin my day,
A young boy out of breath approached me, all tired from play.
He stood right before me with his head tilted down
And said with great excitement, “Look what I found!”

In his hand was a flower, and what a pitiful sight,
With its petals all worn - not enough rain, or too little light.
Wanting him to take his dead flower and go off to play,
I faked a small smile and then shifted away.

But instead of retreating he sat next to my side
And placed the flower to his nose and declared with overacted surprise,
“It sure smells pretty and it’s beautiful, too.
That’s why I picked it; here, it’s for you.”

The weed before me was dying or dead.
Not vibrant of colors: orange, yellow or red.
But I knew I must take it, or he might never leave.
So I reached for the flower, and replied, “Just what I need.”

But instead of him placing the flower in my hand,
He held it mid-air without reason or plan.
It was then that I noticed for the very first time
That weed-toting boy could not see: he was blind.

I heard my voice quiver; tears shone in the sun
As I thanked him for picking the very best one.
“You’re welcome,” he smiled, and then ran off to play,
Unaware of the impact he’d had on my day.

I sat there and wondered how he managed to see
A self-pitying woman beneath an old willow tree.
How did he know of my self-indulged plight?
Perhaps from his heart, he’d been blessed with true sight.
Through the eyes of a blind child, at last I could see

The problem was not with the world; the problem was me.
And for all of those times I myself had been blind,
I vowed to see the beauty in life,
And appreciate every second that’s mine.

And then I held that wilted flower up to my nose
And breathed in the fragrance of a beautiful rose
And smiled as I watched that young boy, Another weed in his hand,
About to change the life of an unsuspecting old man

-anonymous

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Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:56:36 +1030

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Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:56:19 +1030

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Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:29:14 +1030

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Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:27:50 +1030

“After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.” - Italian proverb

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:27:06 +1030

“After the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.”

- Italian proverb

Word.

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:26:05 +1030

Word.

Flume

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:58:39 +1030

Flume

Ya Bish.

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:00:03 +1030

Ya Bish.